There has been no shortage of action games attempting to capture the excitement of challenging sword combat in recent years. From Souls-inspired adventures to character-action games built around elaborate combinations and precise timing, the genre has become increasingly competitive. Standing out in such a crowded field is not easy, particularly for a developer attempting to establish a new property. However, S-Game’s Phantom Blade Zero manages to make a strong impression, largely because it understands what makes this type of game enjoyable: responsive combat, memorable enemies, interesting weapons, and encounters that reward players for learning their opponents.

Released for PC and PlayStation 5 in October 2026, Phantom Blade Zero is an action-adventure game built around Chinese wuxia traditions, supernatural elements, and a visual style the developers describe as kungfupunk. It combines traditional martial arts imagery with mechanical contraptions, grotesque creatures, mysterious organizations, and a dark interpretation of historical Chinese settings. The result is a world that feels familiar in some respects but has enough personality to distinguish itself from other fantasy action games.

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is a polished first-person shooter that gets many of the series’ familiar strengths right. Its graphics are impressive, the PC version runs smoothly in my experience, and the single-player campaign delivers plenty of enjoyable action. Yet beneath that technical quality is a game that feels too closely tied to the direction of recent Call of Duty releases. It offers more of what the series already does well, but rarely gives the impression that it is moving forward in a meaningful way.

The campaign follows a North Korean invasion of South Korea, with players experiencing the conflict through a South Korean squad while Captain Price pursues his own objectives elsewhere. The story moves between Korea, New York, Paris, and Mumbai, mixing conventional firefights with large cinematic sequences. Multiplayer and the extraction-based DMZ mode provide additional ways to play, making this a broad package rather than a single-player experience with a few extras attached.

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For a series as long-running as Final Fantasy, looking backward can be just as difficult as moving forward. The franchise has spent decades reinventing itself, shifting from traditional turn-based battles to increasingly elaborate real-time combat systems while experimenting with different approaches to storytelling and world design. That willingness to change has kept the series relevant, but it has also left some longtime fans longing for the kind of adventure that defined its earlier entries. Final Fantasy Resonance is a response to that desire, bringing the franchise back to a more traditional role-playing experience while dressing it in Square Enix’s increasingly familiar HD-2D presentation.

Based on the first story arc of the discontinued mobile game Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, Resonance has more to prove than a typical nostalgic spin-off. It needs to work as a standalone RPG, appeal to players unfamiliar with its source material, and justify revisiting a style of adventure that has already been explored extensively by the genre. Removing the original game’s gacha mechanics and rebuilding its progression around a conventional single-player campaign gives this adaptation a much stronger foundation, even if some aspects of its design still reflect its mobile origins.

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Valor Mortis takes an unusual route into the Soulslike genre. Developed by One More Level, the studio behind the Ghostrunner series, it combines demanding melee combat, supernatural abilities, platforming, and exploration in an alternate version of Napoleonic Europe. Instead of another fantasy kingdom populated by knights and mythical beasts, players enter a world ravaged by war and a mysterious plague that has transformed soldiers and civilians into grotesque abominations.

You play as William, a soldier who awakens after death in a world that has fallen into ruin. With Napoleon’s voice guiding him and strange powers emerging from his own condition, William must fight through the devastated landscape to uncover what happened. The premise gives the game a strong identity, while its first-person perspective changes the feel of encounters that would be more familiar in a third-person action RPG.

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Planet Zoo 2 expands Frontier Developments’ zoo management simulation with flying and aquatic animals, flexible construction tools and Wildlife Reserves that take players beyond conventional zoo exhibits. The sequel retains the original game’s focus on designing habitats, caring for wildlife and managing visitor facilities, while introducing new environments and a more direct role for conservation. These additions broaden the creative possibilities, although their impact depends on how well the game’s building, management and animal simulation systems work together.

The appeal lies in the relationship between construction and animal care. A successful habitat must look convincing, accommodate its inhabitants and fit naturally into the wider park. Players can shape terrain, arrange vegetation and build structures around a particular theme, then observe animals moving through the environments they have created. Aquariums and aviaries introduce different design challenges, while Wildlife Reserves provide an alternative to the visitor-focused business of running a zoo.

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Enshrouded has spent more than two years in Early Access, growing from a promising survival game into a substantial open-world adventure. Developed by Keen Games, it combines exploration, action RPG combat, resource gathering, crafting, and an unusually flexible building system. Its premise is familiar enough: a fallen kingdom, a dangerous wilderness, and a protagonist tasked with reclaiming what remains. What makes the experience compelling is how these different systems support one another.

The world of Embervale has been devastated by the Shroud, a deadly fog that conceals hostile creatures, valuable resources, and the remains of a lost civilization. As one of the Flameborn, players venture into corrupted regions, search abandoned settlements, improve their equipment, and gradually establish a foothold in the world. The story provides direction, but the game is equally interested in the adventures that emerge from exploring, building, and discovering places beyond the immediate objective.

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Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival takes one of horror’s most disturbing fictional worlds and turns it into a first-person survival horror game. Developed by Saber Interactive, it follows Aidan Lynch as he attempts to rescue his girlfriend, Sunny, after she becomes entangled with the Cenobites and the nightmarish dimension known as the Labyrinth. The result is a game that draws heavily on the atmosphere, imagery, and unsettling ideas that made the original films memorable, while building its own story around the franchise’s familiar horrors.

The game does not shy away from the material that defines Hellraiser. Its world is filled with grotesque imagery, brutal violence, disturbing characters, and an ongoing fascination with the relationship between pain, pleasure, and obsession. The Genesis Configuration, the mysterious puzzle box at the heart of the story, also serves a practical role in gameplay, giving Aidan abilities that help him solve puzzles and survive encounters. These elements give the game a clear identity in a genre crowded with familiar survival horror conventions.

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Star Wars: Galactic Racer combines aggressive arcade racing with a run-based campaign that makes every tournament a test of driving skill and decision-making. Developed by Fuse Games and published by Secret Mode, the game follows Shade, a racer seeking revenge against Galactic League champion Kestar Bool. Its distinct vehicle classes, equipment upgrades, and branching events give the racing a strategic dimension beyond simply finishing first. The result is an entertaining addition to Star Wars gaming, although unreliable assistance systems, difficult-to-read hazards, and an uneven story prevent it from being as consistently rewarding as it could be.

Galactic Racer’s races demand more than simply finding the fastest route to the finish line. Players must balance speed with control, judge when to take risks, and account for rivals who can disrupt a run with offensive equipment. The consequences of a mistake also extend beyond an individual race, as the campaign’s run-based structure makes preparation and vehicle upgrades important to long-term progress. These mechanics give the racing a competitive edge, but their effectiveness depends on how clearly the game communicates hazards and how reliably its assistance systems respond to the player’s decisions.

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There is an obvious problem with telling the story of Emergence Day after twenty years of Gears of War games: everyone already knows how it ends. The Locust emerge from beneath Sera, humanity is caught completely unprepared, and the event becomes the defining catastrophe of the series. Gears of War: E-Day therefore has little interest in trying to make the outcome mysterious. Instead, it focuses on what those first days actually felt like for the people caught in the middle of them.

Set fourteen years before the original Gears of War, E-Day brings Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago back to the beginning of their military careers. They are joined by the other members of Bravo Squad as Kalona becomes one of the first cities to experience the full force of the Locust invasion. The story works best when it stays close to that immediate crisis. The Locust are not yet a familiar enemy with an established hierarchy and decades of history behind them. They are an unknown force appearing from underground, and the uncertainty surrounding them gives the campaign a darker atmosphere than some of the later games in the series.

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It has been seven years since Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, but Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve wastes little time reminding you why the series has lasted this long. The premise remains wonderfully straightforward: climb into a fighter jet, find something that needs destroying, and do it while missiles fill the sky around you. What makes the series special is how effortlessly it turns that simple idea into spectacular aerial battles without requiring the player to learn the complexities of a flight simulator.

Wings of Theve does not attempt to reinvent Ace Combat, and that is probably the right decision. Instead, it expands the established formula with a longer campaign, a more personal story, dynamic weather that has a genuine effect on combat, more useful squadron commands and a substantially larger multiplayer component. It also makes full use of modern hardware to create some of the most impressive skies the series has produced.

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